october!

Postseason baseball is so often defined by moments, and rookie Tyler Moore had one worth remembering on Sunday. In his first postseason at-bat, the Brandon native produced a two-strike, two-out, two-run pinch hit to boost Washington to a 3-2 win over St. Louis in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. It was the first postseason game for a Washington-based team since 1933. Moore, who hit 10 homers this season, reached out to poke a 93 mph fastball from Cardinals lefty Marc Rzepczynski into right field to put the Nationals ahead in the eighth inning. “I’m a blessed man. It’s pretty unbelievable,” Moore, an alum of Northwest Rankin, Meridian Community College and Mississippi State, told mlb.com. … Jackson native and Ole Miss product Seth Smith and his Oakland teammates are still looking for some October magic. Smith, who hit .417 against Detroit in the regular season, is 0-for-5 and the A’s are down 2-0 to the Tigers in the American League Division Series. … While a bunch of former Mississippi Braves were swept from the postseason in Atlanta’s crazy — for lack of a better word — loss to St. Louis in the NL wild card game, there are two ex-M-Braves facing off in the NLDS. Gregor Blanco has a couple of hits in five at-bats for San Francisco, but the Giants are down 2-0 to Cincinnati, where J.J. Hoover has established himself in the Reds’ vaunted bullpen. He worked a scoreless inning in Sunday’s 9-0 blowout. Ex-Ole Miss star Zack Cozart, Cincy’s rookie shortstop, went 1-for-4 in that game and is 2-for-8 in the series. … In two previous trips to the postseason, Amory native and MSU alum Mitch Moreland had gone 19-for-75 with three homers and 10 RBIs, helping Texas get to the World Series in both 2010 and ’11. This year, he got one at-bat and struck out. The Rangers, who led the AL West by 2 games with three to play, fell into the wild card game and were summarily dismissed by Baltimore. What a shocking turn of events for that club.